The Serbian Government's Office for Kosovo and Metohija said this in a statement on Wednesday, responding to what it termed the former officials' current "campaign to mislead and misinform which, apart from distorting reality and facts, is trying to whitewash the evil that they inflicted on our state and people."

"Jeremic and his associates these days, out of insolence and ignorance, dare to, in a defamatory manner, analyze and criticize the policies of the current authorities towards Kosovo and Metohija - and it was they who were in power when the dialogue on Kosovo was moved from the UN to the EU, and EULEX brought to our southern province - and they contributed to it by selling the interests of their own state and people for a little pat on the shoulder and for Brussels' support in elections," the statement said.

It was precisely Jeremic, Tadic, Stefanovic and their associates, it continued, supported by Sasa Jankovic and "other self-styled moral and intellectual giants," who asked the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion on the unilaterally declared independence of Kosovo, and did so using a wrongly formulated question.

The response received, according to the Office, "dealt an almost fatal blow to all the efforts to make sure Serbia was successfully fighing for its interest on the international stage."

"It is precisely these onlookers who are today heckling from the sideline who were at the very center of this amateurish operation, from which this state has not been able to recover to this day," the statement said, adding that the former officials, now opposition politicians, "would be quiet today if they had any shame, and would hope that citizens will forget the evil deeds that they committed."

However, concluded the statement, "they continue to scheme against their own state and its interests."